Are soap fans the ultimate ungrateful whiners?

A number of past interviews by daytime writers, producers, and directors (industry wide) seem to indicate that we are. We are but swine, refusing to accept the pearls of wisdom laid before us. Our creed knows nothing of fine art, entertainment, great writing and producing. We are hopeless. Since they’ve repeatedly raised the issue, I have to wonder, ARE soap fans the ultimate ungrateful whiners?

Let’s take a look at GH:

Sonny’s ‘Hot Mafia Don’ act wore off on me long ago. Imagine that the GH brass gave us the Sonny Corinthos that so many of us have longed for. Imagine Sonny Corinthos as an upstanding citizen and pillar of his community after the mob has been disbanded and run from Port Chuckles. (I know, some GH fans have suggested a painless, or even painful, death for the character as an out of the mob mess. Others have suggested that Sonny leave all together, to never return. How can you reform a man who so callously orders the death of other poeple?)

Despite my unease with Sonny, Maurice Bernard is an enormously talented actor so it’s easy for me to understand why the GH brass has a hard time letting him go. I’m in awe enough of his talent to consider what Bernard could do with the character after Sonny’s transformation. I think it would be the acting challenge of a lifetime for him.

What work would Sonny do?

Who would he interact with, post mob?

What love interests would now be suitable for Sonny?

Work? I dunno. I can’t see Sonny as an accountant. Lawyer? Would he be eligible to take the bar? He’s never been convicted of a crime so far, none that we know of that is – so it seems that he could. If he did take the bar, I couldn’t see him being hired, convincingly, as a prosecutor. He could serve as a defense attorney – but who would he defend? Other criminals? No one wants to see that.

He’d have to work in corporate law. It would allow Sonny to get as far away from his image as a mobster as possible, but still give him room to make use of his skills as a cutthroat – in a socially acceptable profession. He wouldn’t even have to get rid of the dark suits! He and Jax would become competitors in each trying another takeover of ELQ. Their attempts could bring back Dillon and Ned (though sadly Wally Kurth is being wasted on DAYS, and Scott Clifton is far to brilliant on OLTL to bring back to GH). Tracy and her sons would band together along with their new wives and Edward, and Monica, in fending off the family fortune. We could get rid of Remily Shaw and focus on a new generation of Quartermaines. I’d love Sonny forever for that alone!

Sonny’s new peer group could now become Jax, the newly rebuilt Quartermaines, Nik Cassadine, and the occasional random character thrown in. Could he take Jason with him? I’d hate to see that. The bromance needs to end. Jason needs to go his own way. Having taken so many lives, I wouldn’t want to see him go back into medicine, as Jason Q once wanted. The hypocrisy would kill us all, unless there was an epiphany taking place and Jason finally realized the magnitude of his actions. If he went into medicine, he’d have to work in a clinic setting that treats the poor, not at GH. It would open new storylines for both the show and the character. It’s possible that Jason could end up working in a group home, something that would allow him to turn young lives around. If Jason and Sonny worked together, we could never get the image of their psychopathic former lives out of our heads.

Away from the mob, all romance makes sense for these two. You wouldn’t have to wonder what woman was willing to sell herself short, damn her integrity, or put her children at risk, to be with either man. (Let’s hope that NEITHER becomes involved with Elizabeth Webber – whose position as the “betraying healer” is about to be cemented in her ‘forbidden love story” with yet another man Lucky trusts – his own brother)… GAH, writers!

I don’t think fans are the ultimate ungrateful writers. We may not always know what we want, but we do know that we deserve better than the writers typically give us.

2 thoughts on “Are soap fans the ultimate ungrateful whiners?”

I often have visions of the writers/producers of certain shows looking at the ever shrinking ratings and then looking at focus group data from like a decade ago and going “But…in 1992 you all said you wanted this! You said you liked them and you wanted to see more of them!”

In GH’s case it all as the stink of desperation to me. This carnival is a typical GH sweeps stunt…done in September. It was amusement to the high heavens to me to read in SOD how Jill Farren Phelps and Bob Guza felt they had to explain the concept of each day building on top of each other and how if you miss a day you’ll miss a lot….aka they were pitching the fact they wrote a soap opera like a fecking soap opera as something that is completely new and unheard of before. To my “ungrateful and untrained eye” (I think it’s somewhere in the soap blogger contract that you will be unhappy with 99.9% of the show and your favorite couple/characters will always be screwed out to high heaven. Of maybe that’s just Lucky fans? something to think about….) it seems they are throwing a bunch of stuff out there…some that does have legitimate soapy potential….and just ramping up the pace because welll Guza has the attention span of a gnat on crack. (good night with the pacing of this Liz/Nik/Lucky crap…and crap it is…..at this rate it will be over before Halloween)

“Despite my unease with Sonny, Maurice Bernard is an enormously talented actor so it’s easy for me to understand why the GH brass has a hard time letting him go. I’m in awe enough of his talent to consider what Bernard could do with the character after Sonny’s transformation. I think it would be the acting challenge of a lifetime for him.”

This may be an unpopular opinion but I don’t get why Maurice Bernard is considered a great actor. He is good occasionally like when he interacts with Robin or when Michael woke up from his coma but most of the time I am unimpressed or confused by his acting choices.